Donald Trump's State Visit To UK Shelved In Queen's Speech 2017

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 27: British Prime Minister Theresa May with U.S. President Donald Trump in The Oval Office at The White House on January 27, 2017 in Washington, DC. British Prime Minister Theresa May is on a two-day visit to the United States and will be the first world leader to meet with President Donald Trump. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Donald Trump’s planned state visit to the UK appears to have been shelved after the Queen failed to mention it in her speech re-opening Parliament.

Her Majesty usually lists all formal visits for the coming year, but pointedly did not include the US President’s trip.

The absence of Trump’s tour is the clearest signal yet that no date has been agreed on his controversial visit, and follows claims that he was worried about mass street protests causing embarrassment to himself and the Royal Family.

Some protestors had even planned to ‘moon’ the president en masse, as part of a campaign called ‘Show your rump to Trump’.

Theresa May, who handed over the original invitation when she became the first foreign leader to visit the Trump White House in January, is herself now the target of demonstrations after she lost her Commons majority

State visit invitations are formally issued by the Queen as she hosts guests at Buckingham Palace and accompanies them in a carriage ride down the Mall.

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The Queen pays tribute to President Barack Obama on his state visit in 2011.

But some Tory as well as Labour MPs believe that May was misguided in moving so quickly in engineering the trip to the UK to help cement the so-called “special relationship” between the two countries.

Trump’s attempt to introduce a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries sparked a huge backlash in Britain, with the Speaker of the House of Commons making clear he would not agree to allow Parliament to be used as a forum for the President.

The timing of the state visit was then fudged, with plans to stage to delay it from the summer to October, when Parliament was on a conference recess.

The snap general election threw the process into further doubt and Trump will be even more uncertain about a trip given the instability of May’s prospective minority government.

A No.10 spokesman told HuffPost UK: “An invitation has been extended and accepted. The visit wasn’t mentioned in the Queen’s Speech because a date hasn’t been fixed yet.”

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Donald Trump and Theresa May at the Nato summit this year.

However, standard protocol is for the Monarch to use the Queen’s Speech to confirm overseas visits.

This year, she mentioned she would host the King and Queen of Spain on a formal visit but had no mention of Trump.

Last year, for example, Her Majesty used her address to declare “Prince Philip and I look forward to welcoming His Excellency the President of Colombia on a State Visit in November.”

The Guardian reported last month that the President informed the PM personally in recent weeks that he wanted to delay his trip, citing a Downing Street adviser who was in the room during a phone call.

The White House denied that the visit had been mentioned in the phone call, but Jeremy Corbyn pounced on Twitter.

Cancellation of President Trump's State Visit is welcome, especially after his attack on London's mayor & withdrawal from #ParisClimateDeal.

May was embarrassed in January when Trump unveiled his plan to ban travel from key Muslim-majority countries, just hours after she left Washington.

Since then she has also been attacked for failing to sign a joint letter of condemnation by European G7 nations after the President pulled out of the Paris climate accord.

The PM further infuriated voters when she failed to robustly condemn Trump after he made an extraordinary and unfounded attack on London Mayor Sadik Khan just hours after the London Bridge attack this month.

The President misquoted part of the mayor’s message to Londoners, telling them not to be alarmed by the increased police presence on the streets of the capital.

Khan’s office pointed out Trump’s error later but the President responded by accusing London’s mayor of making a “pathetic excuse”. Khan then called on the UK government to cancel Trump’s invitation.